Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS

From: Andrea Veri <av gnome org>

To: Frederic Peters <fpeters gnome org>

Cc: foundation-list gnome org

Subject: Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS

Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 22:21:28 +0200

2011/5/25 Frederic Peters <fpeters gnome org>:
> What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation
> job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the
> release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are
> put into positions by different persons?
The idea of seeing a GNOME OS coming out in the future as a full and
complete desktop suite is simply awesome. Many technical and non-technical
decisions that are now taken respecting all the parts (distributions,
companies etc.)
involved in the release procedures and decisions could be finally
taken by the *GNOME*
Foundation (by its members and developers) on its own. On the other
side, changing
GNOME’s definition from a desktop manager to a complete desktop suite
takes in multiple
technical issues (should we go for an RPM-based system or a DEB one?
should we develop
just for the Linux platform? and what about BSD? etc.) that will
require a lot of months and
efforts to happen.
Please also note that I would love seeing GNOME being freely available
to everyone
as it is now, everyone should be able to grab GNOME’s sources and
build their own
distribution like it’s been happening for several years now. Having
multiple distributions
and flavours is definitely a big plus within the Open Source’s
communities, all the
contributors and developers should be able to choose where and how they want to
contribute: seeing your ideals, values and ideas reflected in a
specific contribution makes
you willing to do your best to see it growing and being successful.
That said, I think this is not an issue to be fully discussed within
the GNOME Board
of Directors, it’s a decision that should be taken by the whole GNOME
Foundation i
ncluding *all* his members, contributors and developers together. (i.e
through a referendum)
In the end, as pointed out by a few other candidates this is actually
just a proposal
and many discussions should take place within the Release Team and all
the maintainers
involved to evaluate all the way this possibility, its pros and its
cons to find out which decision
will *really* benefit our beloved project.
thanks,
Andrea